


Can't Hide Under The Bed

by gala_apples



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Lost Childhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-05
Updated: 2012-06-05
Packaged: 2017-11-06 21:58:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/423713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Grace is three her Mamma dies. It's the first day of the rest of her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Hide Under The Bed

**Author's Note:**

> I started to make this mix for Bandom reverse big bang, but the story of it got too deep into my head, so I wrote it. Mediafire has asked me to take the mix down.

[](http://photobucket.com)

  
1) My Mamma Said- Aqua  
2) Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall- Coldplay  
3) You Are My Number One- Smashmouth  
4) Slow Cheetah- Red Hot Chili Peppers  
5) Falling On- Finger Eleven  
6) Me Against The World- Simple Plan  
7) I’m A Hellcat- Nekromantix  
8) Faith Love and Happiness- Thousand Foot Krutch  
9) Funhouse- Pink  
10) 15- Marilyn Manson

Grace is three when Mamma crosses to the multiverse. There are men around when it happens. Everyone is white, but Mamma’s got red. She’s bleeding. The men in white try to take her, but a man in a blue jacket takes her first. She screams. She’s not supposed to go with strangers.

A man that never gets out of his chair sings to her every time she cries. His voice doesn’t sound like Mamma’s. She screams for Mamma. He tells her she can’t come, she’s gone. She cries. He sings more.

The nightmares don’t come for a long time. The first time she has one, she runs to the nearest Killjoy to ask and make sure that they won’t bleed out like Mamma did, except on the sand instead of inside a glass building. They all take turns hugging her, even DD, though she has to stand up for his. Then Jet Star holds her, arms covering all of her as Party explains that they definitely will die. Maybe not bleed out, in the Zones there are a lot of ways to get ghosted. But until they do die, they love her. 

Kobra Kid tells her about the Waveheads. They’re the girls and boys that play games on the edges of the Zones. They think they’re different, but they’re not. They still wear what other people tell them to, just colours instead of white, and they still wish that their bodies looked different, they just can’t afford surgery. And because they feel uncomfortable they take pills to make themselves happy. When she’s older he promises he’ll take her to them, let her see first hand how dumb they all are. For now he says all she needs to know is that she’s perfect without alteration of cloth, skin, or brain chemistry.

Jet Star is the first person to put a blaster in her hands. She doesn’t like it. It’s white, the same colour as the evil city that killed Mamma. He doesn’t care. He says it isn’t a choice, no arguing, Grace Killjoy! He makes her practice all the time, until it feels normal to stretch both hands around the handle and hook her index fingers into the trigger. Her fingers aren’t strong enough to pull it individually. She still doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like it right up until when Jet tells her it might feel better if she’s shouting as she shoots. It does. It’s better when she shouts ‘I hate you!’ and curls her fingers and thinks of the stupid men in white.

Party Poison tells her the history, and the future. He explains what happened to California; how it is now, and how it was when Mamma died, and how it was when the bombs fell, and how it was before that. It’s only getting worse and worse. Except it doesn’t have to. Because if the companies are drugging people into sleep, the Zonerunners can be the citizen’s worst nightmare. If the city is building and fortifying into sanitation, they can be disasters. They’re not heroes, because right now no one deserves to be saved. They’re lost causes, defectors from the idiocracy who will come back and tear it all apart. Grace doesn’t always understand everything he says, but she knows she agrees with it.

Fun Ghoul shows her how to not give a shit. The first lesson is learning all the different swears, and saying them over and over again until they’re normal like ghosted or nitro. Jet and Party and Kobra aren’t very happy about it, they have arguments they won’t let her hear. But Fun Ghoul tells her about them anyway, when they’re alone and throwing hardened chunks of sand at things. They want her to stay as much like a kid as she can, and kids don’t swear. But fuck that, right? Grace nods. Ghoul throws a clump of sand at her, and it explodes into her mass of hair. Grace doesn’t try to shake it out. Maybe she wants to be messy and covered in sand. Ghoul has tattoos, Party has red hair. She can look how she want. She can look however the _hell_ she wants. And if they tell her to comb it out when she gets back, she might even tell them to screw off. Because she _can_.

The motherfuckers kidnap her. They attack her family, and they take her. The building is white and concrete and glass, just one in a city full of clones. There are other kids there, but they won’t let her talk to them. The woman tells her friendship is an obsolete concept. Grace thinks about her Killjoys and lets each ‘opportunity for realignment’ pass by. Whenever no one is looking she turns her back to the camera and hopes there’s not an embedded one on the opposite wall and raises her sleeve. With a bitten fingernail -one of her trigger fingers, and once she escapes this shithole she’ll make sure she never puts her blaster down again, never be caught off guard again- she scratches GPKJ into her skin. The same place, over and over again, until a Drac comes in to hustle her into another room for another ‘opportunity’ and she has to put her sleeve down again. The cotton scrapes against irritated skin, reminding her to keep the faith.

Show and DiDi and Chimp try to take her somewhere safe. She’s got the van door open and one foot out before Chimp listens to her demands to stop the car. Grace can catch up to them, or to anyone else in the network of Zonerunners later. Right now it’s more important that she destroy the diner. It’s harder to do than it is to just think about it. She doesn’t have a hammer or a lighter, though Show did give her her blaster back. But it has to be done. Her family is gone, the only thing left holding her back is her home.

The Killjoys are finished. Worse than dead, they’ll be destroyed by SCARECROW into robotic perfection. But Grace will carry on the name. Her fathers only wanted to be free. She’s a step apart from that vision. Their beliefs were self-centered, hers involve everyone. She will make every Drac, BLI employee, and Battery City citizen pay.


End file.
